A little problem of using 4GB Microdirve on Z

[ZDevil]

Hi all,

I managed to get a Hitachi 4GB microdrive from ebay.  The card runs great after following the tutorial here to re-partition the drive into one big chunk.  However, when writing lots of files and folders to the card, the transmission will stop in the way every some minutes (and the desktop will hang as well unless I plug out/power off my Z).  Reading data from the card and copying them to desktop are smooth so far.  And no problem at all is found with a card reader, so I guess there may be something wrong about the setting of Z itself (mine is C860).  I am not quite familiar with disk formatting and my desktop runs on W2K not a Linux box.  Your comments are much appreciated.  Thanks!

ZDevil

[Omicron]

Hi all,

I managed to get a Hitachi 4GB microdrive from ebay.  The card runs great after following the tutorial here to re-partition the drive into one big chunk.  However, when writing lots of files and folders to the card, the transmission will stop in the way every some minutes (and the desktop will hang as well unless I plug out/power off my Z).  Reading data from the card and copying them to desktop are smooth so far.  And no problem at all is found with a card reader, so I guess there may be something wrong about the setting of Z itself (mine is C860).  I am not quite familiar with disk formatting and my desktop runs on W2K not a Linux box.  Your comments are much appreciated.  Thanks!

ZDevil

I am totallly guessing but perhaps we are talking of hundeds of entertainment files or the like (perfectly legit copies I am sure).

My sugesstion would be to run a speed disk or a check for fragmentation rates.

It may simply be trashing over  so many 100's of files split into many parts eash.

When connected to the system, any util made for a  hard drive should work  to determine fragmenttion rate onm the microdrive

Short of a massive  fragmention  (and or running out of space), perhaps you could group like files into several ZIPs and a script to break open a zip depending on need/mood.  Or even better/easier, re-partition the disk into several smaller partitions that will have smaller cluster sizses and therefore faster access, not too mention more file per GB.  Certainly no REASON you have to have just one partition, just the way I set up the tutorial.

All this assumes no problem with the drive iitself....could be bad sectors etc, so that might be good to check first.  Throuw some huge files in and fill it to the brim and see if problem occurs even on huge file when capacity is near max.

Just drop them in and read  them off and compare....see if you got a bad sector way out in neveer never land.

Hope this helps.


Fell free to PM me if you post more and I don't reply. Always so much to do..

[ZDevil]

Thanks for your very detailed reply, Omicron.

I load the MD with so many files to test its performance and also to treat it as my desktop backup, as I am planning to use my Z as a laptop replacement.  

Just run scandisk and defragmentation on my W2K desktop and no problems are observed.  Huge files such as movies throw in and play without any troubles either.  My old card reader just gets the job done, while weird things happen when it comes to Z (now running on Sharp rom).  One thing more: both my PC and Z will hang most of the time when sending hundreds of files, folders and sub-folders to the MD on Zs.  As what Omicron has suggested in the last post, the chance is lower when sending the data several times and in smaller bulks.

I opt for one big partition instead of several bcoz it seems easier to assess and manage files in one chunk on Z (it's just a few gigs afterall).

So the mystery remains to be resolved...!?  

[raybert]

Hi,

I've experienced this problem also, but under different circumstances.

I started a thread about it here:  stalled file uploads.

jerrybme started a thread about it here:  SSH File transfer problem.

And another thread about it can be found here:  TCP/IP network dropping over USB.

[ORG: it might be worth merging all of these threads.]

Here's a summary of the facts:

• Occurs *only* over TCP/IP-over-USB network connection
• Occurs with multiple protocols: FTP, SFTP, SCP, and even VNC
• Occurs with very large files, very many small files; any large data throughput perhaps
• Occurs with multiple host systems (Linux; Winblows)
• Occurs with multiple (Sharp-based) ROMs/Kernels (tkc 2.5.1; sash; cacko; more?)
• Occurs with multiple storage devices and file systems (SD; CF/microdisk; ext2; fat)
• When it occurs, the Z stops responding to any network traffic, causing host systems to eventually timeout.  Unplugging the Z and then reconnecting it fixes the problem.

This seems (to me) to point to the Z's usb networking sub-system.

It's sounding to me like a resource leak which probably causes the driver to hang until the connection gets reset and the resources get freed/reset.  If that is the case, it will probably be hard to fix because (AFAIK) the source isn't available.

I wonder if an older version of the usb driver might help?

Anyone have any ideas about this one?  I'd love to get this fixed.  It can be very annoying when you need to put files on the Z.

~ray

-- edit 3/1/05:

There's another recent thread discussing this problem here.

Also, another recent thread is discussing a problem purportedly related to SD cards, but it sounds suspiciously like this same problem.

~ray

[snufkin]

I hv similar problem when I use my BT connection.  After several trials, I found that if I "underclock" my Z (C760), the transfer of large files was much smoother.

I'm using Cacko rom 1.21 and use the built-in applet to underclock my Z everytime I have a BT connection.

my old post